Grammar

My 11^th grammar tip is, after making sure you are following all the rules, also make sure it sounds natural. Unless you are speaking to a highly grammatically skilled audience that is able to register the complex structure you are using, your audience might have to repeat the message to themselves a couple times (if they don’t reject it on face) in order to absorb the meaning. If you listened to the power point for this week there was an example on slide 9. I know I myself have created a sentence that followed all the rules but sounded awkward when being delivered. Don’t fall into the trap of stepping right but sounding like a robot – you want to keep your humanity in your writing because it is the key to your voice.

For our homework of finding grammar mistakes, the first is an error of commas – or lack thereof. It was originally shared in my Public Relations class to show how bad grammar is important in that field as well. The lack of proper punctuation can cause one to come across as uneducated or careless. For this example, one wonders exactly what happened.

For the second one, I chose a story I came across that is missing the article “the” in the title before TouchBar. It is something small, and likely intentional rather than a mistake. Journalists often strive for brevity and the title is already 2 lines long. Regardless, it peeved me. I believe since I am a foreign language student, my eye is trained for these nuanced words.

The third was an overly-enthusiastic product description on Amazon. It is almost entirely in capital letters, minus a few words that I guess were overlooked in the frenzy of excitement. Additionally, the last line has too many spaces around the comma. I thought it was a prime example of a hot-mess of grammar.