I don’t think I’ve ever had a preferred website on grammar rules. I’ve always just stuck something in google and see what is most relevant to what I want to find. So, this is something that is a little hard to answer! But, I think a website that has been helping me a lot is “Grammar Bytes.”

This seems to be the website that has been the most helpful. They explain things so simply, so that I’m able to grasp more of what’s going on, and the examples that they use are awesome.

I guess this is a site that was more designed for teachers to use. Their main page includes sections of use, like presentations, or handouts, for a teacher to give to his/her students.

I think for that reason I like it so much. If you were to teach someone something about grammar, it helps you to retain and understand the concepts a lot better. This website has helped me with that. I’m far from understanding everything, but this is providing the steps to help me get through it.

It’s been great with exercises too! They give really great examples, but they give you practice sentences, or things to work on to be able to see exactly what you’re struggling with so you can target what to fix. Purdue online writing lab has helped a bunch too! But it seems to be a bit more complicated to understand for me. I need things super simple when it comes to grammar!

Topical Guide

The topical guide is honestly the only that I’ve used to find anything in the book. Of course, the page numbers are set out for our benefit, but this has been such a beauty for me! This topical guide has shown comparisons between things that I didn’t even know had a difference. For example. The words renown and renowned. Renown is a noun that means “fame or eminence.” And renowned is an adjective that means “famous or celebrated.” Honestly, I had no idea that they even had a difference. It’s these kinds of things that have helped to open my eyes a little bit to things I didn’t know were there.

To be honest, I always thought I was pretty decent with grammar, at least all of the basics. After beginning this class, I now know that I don’t know anything. I’m seriously the worst with this grammar journey, because there are so many things that I had no idea even existed! I didn’t know about dangling modifiers, or homophones, homonyms and homographs. Who even came up with things like that? I will say though, they are very interesting and I hope these things are helping me to improve my grammar.

Something I thought was interesting though was an antecedent. I’ve always heard about them, but I never quite knew what they were. They are a word that a pronoun refers to. A clear connection between the antecedent and the pronoun needs to exist for the sentence to make sense. They are difficult to know at times because with some sentences it’s unclear what the antecedent of a pronoun is, and for that reason writers have problems with the agreement.

I really hope I retain all of this information, but so far, I think I’ve been doing pretty well!

11th Secret

A rule that I think could be the 11^th rule could be the confusion of there, their and they’re. This is something that many people seem to confuse because they are so similar. These words can be a small part of the sentence, but if you use one of them incorrectly, then it will change the meaning of the sentence completely. If I were to say something like, “Is this basket theres?” (referring to some friends that had recently come to stay) The sentence wouldn’t make sense at all, because it is not speaking in the possessive. The word “there” is not referring to someone, or people. The correct form would be with the word “theirs.” This is something that I think would be a good rule to add or be aware of because it is a mistake that seems to be more common than it needs to be. I’m not the best at grammar, and all of the rules that the English language contains, but I’m proud to say that I’ve got this one down.

I’ve been trying to look at some grammar mistakes within the university or just around where I tend to be during the week and I found a couple things that would not count as “good grammar.”

One grammar mistake was on a billboard saying, “thank god its Friday.” This should say “it’s” indicating “it is.”

Another one is a pretty famous billboard from Chic-Fil-A, where it says “Eat Mor Chikin.” They do this to be funny in a way where the cow is writing the billboard, but more, and chicken are obviously spelled wrong

The last one is another billboard, but it was for a used car dealership and it says, “We bye used cars.” The word “bye” that is used was supposed to be the word “buy,” meaning the purchase of used vehicles.

To be honest I haven’t used an online grammar site until I googled one for this class. What came up was the book I bought for this class, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.

http://www.grammarbook.com/

They have information about rules for different areas of English for example, punctuations, spellings, and homophones. They tend to give you example questions and various other services that their site provides. You can subscribe to their services and quizzes to help you improve on your writing skills. There are blogs that you can read about issues you might be having. The blog has room for you to leave comments and ask questions with something you don’t understand. I have found the book to be helpful with my assignments. I will use the website for further help in my homework and recommend others to look at it for some extra help.

A grammar error I found this week was on the website TMZ. They had an article about a new television show starting up in West Palm Beach. However, TMX wrote Pam Beach instead, which they should have corrected the spelling. Everyday there seems to be errors on websites, in articles for the newspaper and it’s fine no one is perfect. But, at the same time when you are sending out information for all to read you want to make sure that you have the spelling done correctly. 

My favorite grammar website is Daily Grammar (dailygrammar.com). I stumbled upon this site while looking up information for this course. This site is really helpful and gives a great overview of grammar. It’s fairly simple in its look and style, but it has a lot of beneficial information.

Something really cool about this website is that it has a blog that is updated every weekday. I think they are on day 270 of updating the site. This is very helpful because it allows site-readers to learn something new every day. Each post is a new “lesson” or subject that is taught. There’s information and then a quiz at the end.

What I like the most about this site is that it has a glossary of terms that can help you find information on the word or term you are looking for. The other day I was looking up information on verbs on this site and was able to find what I was looking for in the glossary. It took me to a whole page of information on different kinds of verbs.

I also like that this site has grammar quizzes. There are quizzes on just about every grammar topic you can think of. I think these quizzes are helpful when you want to brush up on your grammar skills. 

For this week’s editing mistake, I saw a review someone left on Facebook for a fall party they attended. I don’t think the first comma in this specific sentence works. I think it would be better if it read, “More notice for tonight would have been great, but thanks for the great time and amazing event.”

Ever since I started my college career, my grammatical skills have been constantly put to the test.  I used to think I had a knack for grammar, but writing hundreds of papers has shown me just how naive I was.  I have repeatedly been forced to reexamine what I thought I knew.  

When I google my many, many grammatical questions, one site that pops up often is quickanddirtytips.com--more commonly known as “Grammar Girl.” The site is run by magazine writer, Mignon Fogarty. It’s very user friendly and modern, plus it seems like Mignon has an answer for almost everything.  From the homepage, you can quickly access recent tips, popular tips, and archives--all are tagged with cute images and memes.  

In addition to the site’s modern layout, its grammar tips are often modern sounding as well, making them easy to read. My one complaint about the site is that, despite its name: “Quick and Dirty Tips,” the tips are often long-winded. Sometimes, I have to skim a lengthy article to find an answer, and my brain just can’t take the excess information.

This week’s grammar error was my own.  A manager sent me an instant message requesting the starting dates of her new employees.  At first I typed, “They’re starting on…” but I decided to change my verbiage to, “Their effective dates are…” at the last minute.  Unfortunately I forgot to change the pronoun when I changed the rest of the sentence, and sent the message as, “They’re effective dates are…”  I was super ashamed of myself.

Since English 1010, I have been told to use a specific writing site for all of my collegiate writing needs.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

I honestly did not realize for a long time that there were other OWL sites. I was told to use the one site and it gave me everything I needed to know to write papers. The site tells you how to write papers, cite resources of all kinds and how to do this in MLA or APA formats. It is a one stop shop for all your writing needs. Anytime I have felt confused or lost in writing, I turn to the Purdue OWL and it rights my course. Like a compass in unfamiliar territory, The Purdue OWL will get you through the murky waters of academia. Though the Boilermakers can go [expletive] themselves. Go Wildcats.

My grammar mistake for the week came in the form of a mistake a co-worker made while talking to me. This may make me sound like a bad person, because I turned his words around in a way that he felt spoke badly of his deceased father. I assure you, there is a very high possibility that I am a terrible person. He made a joke about naked men and said, “That’s why I miss my dad.” He meant that his dad shared a lot of dirty jokes with him, but I immediately started laughing at the way he structured that sentiment. I had to explain that he made it sound like he missed his naked father, who is now dead. I am a bad person. Oh well, that is how I live.