So far this
semester I have learned about the difference between “its” and “it’s”. As a
high school student, I took a creative writing class and vaguely remember encountering
this situation. I wrote a horror story for Halloween about a haunted insane
asylum where a mad doctor was living. Like I said, I remember writing something
along the lines of “It’s footsteps could be heard from the floor above” but was
confused because that didn’t look right to me. As a student, as well a writer, I knew that “it’s” was a contraction
for “it is”. I had no idea that there was a correct word to use instead
though: its. I kind of thought about it, especially since there was a green
squiggly line reminding me that using “it’s” in the sentence was incorrect but “its”
just looked silly to me because I had never been taught it before.
Another
thing I have learned in this class is how often publications make mistakes
themselves or choose not to follow a rule. I always assumed that if you were
going to be a journalist or an editor you needed to be perfect at grammar; it
was this thought that prevented me from wanting to be an editor for a
publishing company. It was that collage exercise that really made it apparent
to me; seeing in black in white how many publications used weird grammar.
As a kid from the technology generation, I have wondered if having been
exposed to so much technology, especially things like Microsoft word or texting
spell check, if that is one reason why my grammar isn’t that great. Being reminded of your mistakes so
easily and then having an immediate solution for it, as what Word does, makes
it second nature to have a computer fix your grammar and spelling mistakes for
you instead of thinking about why it’s wrong and how to fix it yourself; one of its programmed purposes is to do
this for you. This is one reason why I wasn’t very surprised about how many
students use texting abbreviations in essays or such bad grammar.
Finally the last thing I learned so
far in this course is how to use punctuation to change the meaning of a sentence
or paragraph. It was that exercise we did in the first week of class that made
me realize this. For some reason it had never really occurred to me that you
could change your grammar to change your meaning but when we did that exercise
it dawned on me like “Oh duh! Why have I never done this before?!”. I
especially liked the discussion when Stephanie presented how they changed the
dear John letter; theirs was very
creative and humorous.
Other than these examples I can’t
really think of other specifics that I have learned. As a high school student, especially now as a college student, I know
the importance of grammar. I just hope that in this class I can continue to
keep learning different things to be able to grow as a writer and become a
great teacher.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like your comment on the computers. When I see the red and green lines on the bottom of my words or sentences, I just accept that they are wrong without thinking why they are wrong.
ReplyDeletegood point, Susan and Kara. Also, grammar checkers aren't always correct, so writers have to be the final editors.
ReplyDeleteKara, the pattern of the week is actually two sentences joined with a semicolon, back to back. Try again next week, okay?
Also good to note: editors of those magazines weren't wrong; they were simply stablizing the few areas of our conventions that are highly variable across different kinds of writing. So publications make up style sheets declaring how to punctuate these ares so their copy editors will do so consistently across the entire publication.
hope this clears up some stuff for you--
B.