As we all know, when you run a grammar blog, you run the risk of making your own grammar and spelling mistakes as every turn.
And indeed, the saying 'don't throw stones in a glass house' has proved to be particularly significant for me, because my house is actually made of glass. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought it: I guess that I liked how much sunlight the house got. But in reality, living in a glass house is really difficult. Anyone can look in at any time, which makes stepping out of the shower an arrestable offence. In fact, having a shower at all is an arrestable offence, since that has glass walls too.
And just like my house made of glass, this blog is also made of glass, and mistakes that I make in it are like stones. But as I have said before, we all make mistakes in our spelling and grammar, even MC Grammar. Enjoy!
In 'Pronounciation that could get you killed' I wrote 'ain't so such word as irregardless' and, I didn't put a full stop at the end of the first sentence of this post.
In 'Rainbow Grammar Family', I spelled 'spelling' with two l's. Ironic, considering the content of that post!
In 'whom vs who', I wrote 'a online viral story'. How foolish, as I should have used an 'an'.
In 'Indecent Preposition', I placed a hyphen where there should have been an en-dash when I wrote 'Hey - I didn't know they knew each other!' and, I wrote 'They live in same apartment block' instead of 'they live in the same apartment block'.
In 'Mission: To pause for half a second', I wrote 'again, this move seemed to make absolutely no sense', instead of 'this movie seemed to make absolutely no sense'.
And you have to ask yourself, what other outlandish mistakes have I made without even realising?
That's where you come in. These mistakes cannot be brought to light unless avid readers like yourselves step forward to take out the trash. Which, incidentally, I take out in a glass trash can.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Mission: To pause for half a second.
At the end of last year, the fourth Mission: Impossible film came out.
I remember seeing the first Mission: Impossible film. I was just a slip of a thing, and me and my friends had a sleep over and watched it. But no matter how hard I tried, I had no fucking idea what was going on. As far as I could tell, some people the main guy cared about were killed, and he somehow knew who was to blame, so he packed a bag, made some phone calls from the airport, and killed everybody. There was a very confusing sequence where he abseiled from the roof in order to steal something, but really, that's all I could work out.
Four years later, the second Mission: Impossible film came out, and I went to the movies on a date. Again, this move seemed to make absolutely no sense. It had something to do with a vial of disease, a woman who was good at driving a car, and Tom Cruise also enjoyed abseiling in that film too, but mostly just for leisure in the same way that some people enjoy taking a nap in the middle of the day, or having a kit kat in the middle of the afternoon.
When the third film came out, and I found out about it, I exclaimed loudly: 'no fucking way am I going to see that movie. The last two didn't make sense, and I've got too much on my plate, and no one on God's green earth can trick me into seeing it.'
And I was right. Now, with the fourth film on it's way, I still feel happy with my realisation that the Mission: Impossible films make absolutely no sense.
But there is one thing about the Mission: Impossible films that keeps me awake at night, and that it the mysterious colon that lives between the words 'mission' and 'impossible'.
The colon looks like this
Although it resembles the semi-colon, the colon is used for telling the reader that what follows in a sentence will prove, clarify, explain, or simply list items in relation to what is referred to before.
The verdict was in: The jury took their places with resolved faces.
There could be no mistaking it: It was the same gnome she had thrown out the week before.
She checked the contents of her bag again: Lipstick, banana, diary, passport, pick axe, chestnuts and bleach.
Another useful way to think of the colon is to regard it as a brief pause – it's a little longer than a comma or a dash, and can be used to lend importance to what is about to follow it.
So, considering all this, having a colon in the middle of 'mission' and 'impossible' is like saying 'this mission is totally impossible'. The 'impossible' part is the clarifying part, explaining exactly what short of mission we're dealing with here. A damn impossible one.
I remember seeing the first Mission: Impossible film. I was just a slip of a thing, and me and my friends had a sleep over and watched it. But no matter how hard I tried, I had no fucking idea what was going on. As far as I could tell, some people the main guy cared about were killed, and he somehow knew who was to blame, so he packed a bag, made some phone calls from the airport, and killed everybody. There was a very confusing sequence where he abseiled from the roof in order to steal something, but really, that's all I could work out.
Four years later, the second Mission: Impossible film came out, and I went to the movies on a date. Again, this move seemed to make absolutely no sense. It had something to do with a vial of disease, a woman who was good at driving a car, and Tom Cruise also enjoyed abseiling in that film too, but mostly just for leisure in the same way that some people enjoy taking a nap in the middle of the day, or having a kit kat in the middle of the afternoon.
When the third film came out, and I found out about it, I exclaimed loudly: 'no fucking way am I going to see that movie. The last two didn't make sense, and I've got too much on my plate, and no one on God's green earth can trick me into seeing it.'
And I was right. Now, with the fourth film on it's way, I still feel happy with my realisation that the Mission: Impossible films make absolutely no sense.
But there is one thing about the Mission: Impossible films that keeps me awake at night, and that it the mysterious colon that lives between the words 'mission' and 'impossible'.
The colon looks like this
Although it resembles the semi-colon, the colon is used for telling the reader that what follows in a sentence will prove, clarify, explain, or simply list items in relation to what is referred to before.
The verdict was in: The jury took their places with resolved faces.
There could be no mistaking it: It was the same gnome she had thrown out the week before.
She checked the contents of her bag again: Lipstick, banana, diary, passport, pick axe, chestnuts and bleach.
Another useful way to think of the colon is to regard it as a brief pause – it's a little longer than a comma or a dash, and can be used to lend importance to what is about to follow it.
So, considering all this, having a colon in the middle of 'mission' and 'impossible' is like saying 'this mission is totally impossible'. The 'impossible' part is the clarifying part, explaining exactly what short of mission we're dealing with here. A damn impossible one.
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| 'Lucky no-one put a CCTV camera in here, or this would look totally stupid.' |
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