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Spellling and grammar! Help!
Posted by Tresure • 29 days ago • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: grammar, spelling
I love writing but my spelling and grammar is aweful...How can I improve it?
User Comments
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Hi! I'm in the same boat. I constantly use my spell and grammar checker. I wouldn't give up hope though, as with time and further writings, you will improve. Another tip is to get someone to proof read your documents!-
Agreed. Practice makes perfect -- or at least close enough.
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I have the same problem, and I think like Maccasenior said that use spelling and grammar cheker, and whenever you can have someone proof read your text, and help you correct ( while explaining you why it was wrong). I am sure that with time, it will improve. Keep writting, this is the key. -
I was on Digg the other day and read this comment "maybe you should check your grammar". Another commentator asked what was wrong with the grammar. The response? That blogger copied the entire comment and showed where the commas should have been and a present tense verb that was misused. We have a**holes like that out there but people shouldn't be bothered by it, afterall, you are not writing a college essay.-
Comma police like that are assholes. But making sure you don't have real grammatical mistakes is important. There/their, its/it's, wrong verb tenses, misspelled words reflect badly on you.
It also matters where the mistakes are. For example, I don't really give a rat's ass if I mess up spelling or somehting ina forum like this, but in an article I'm pissed if i find mistakes after the fact (and i have).
Also, I think it's perfectly OK to write like you speak and use grammar to make a point. I write in phrases and incomplete sentences all the time. But I'm sure that no one has a problem understanding my writing, which is the point.
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A good, inexpensive ($10 - $15) book on grammar would help. Sometimes the grammar checkers aren't right, and spell-checkers don't work in all cases (there/their; here/hear, buy/by, etc).
I agree with KN that it was impolite to correct someone's post in public. However, even though you aren't writing a college essay, bad writing makes you seem less credible and could mean you lose readers.
I've left many blogs because of very bad writing - if the blogger does not respect his or her own thoughts enough to get them down right, why should I care? -
Pick up an element of style workbook or something and go through it. -
read read read - the more you read, I feel, the more improved your writing will be. And just keep writing... I'm blessed with an unnatural grammatical ability - which is why I used to edit all of my friends' papers in college LOL -
I agree with SJTavo--read and write more. Also, if you have a particular question, go on-line and look up the answer. You may find out that your instincts are more right than you think or at the very least you can learn something new every time you think of a new way to ask. (May I humbly recommend looking around BC for writing and grammar blogs? Mine, perhaps?
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there are a lot of free sites now where you can find punctuation/grammatical questions answered..... when doing some of the writing here at work, I'll look for some sort of APA guide online to ensure I don't conflict with Communications...
but yup - write write write - I am always either writing or reading in my down time.... i devour words so that I can expand my vocabulary, knowledge and writing style.
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I am backing up sjtavo and legbamel: read. Read books and magazines, fact and fiction or anything in between. Read printed text, people who write online are not as reliable as printed and published text which has been proofread by an author. When online, remember that the most often used form isn't necessarily the correct one (although you can decide for yourself whether you want to write correctly or write like most people). Finally, do not use e.g. Google Fight to find out the correct grammatical form. This is because different grammar and spelling rules apply in different dialects of English (US, British, Irish, Indian etc - and a lot of the content in English is not written by native speakers anyway). -
Spelling errors are no big thing. Scott Fitzgerald was a pathetically bad speller, and even in the days before spell checkers, his editors considered his bad spelling to be a mere quirk.
Bad grammar is another thing entirely. Good grammar brings clarity. Bad grammar spreads confusion. And so-called online grammar checkers are often wrong. I also don't think practice will be much help if there's no solid foundation to support it. Grammar has a few rules, which can be found in a beginning grammar book.
Once those rules are learned, they can be turned on their head in developing a distinctive style.-
Savvy, until you are a world-renowned author, spell things correctly. to not do so is just stupid.
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I don't worry so much online as even when you spell things correctly it can be incorrect depending on who is reading.
I'm British so I spell arsehole that way and i've been corrected by people from other countries, the fact that americans spell it asshole doesn't really matter as we all know what it's meant to be.
I don't make a fuss about ass is also the same as a type of donkey so really you are calling someone a donkeyhole,lol.
Think i'm getting off topic a bit, personally I don't worry too much.
Let's start another topic about english and american words that mean different things, it's real fun.-
You are clearly missing the point. Spelling Color v. Colour or Favorite v. Favourite is not what is ridiculous. Not writing clearly with good spelling and grammar is.
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DailyBeer:
I'm afraid you missed my point, which is - bad grammar is a far more serious fault than bad spelling. Bad spelling is easily corrected with online spell-check. Bad grammar muddies up an entire piece of writing and cannot be effectively corrected with any grammar check. As a former managing editor, I hardly condone bad spelling (not that I ever saw much of it, thanks to spell-check). -
The more you read the better you will write, both from the spelling and grammar perspective. Also "The Elements of Style" is a nice handy reference to have.
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