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On July 01 2010 06:15 benjammin wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:11 hp.Methos wrote:
what books are you making your students read? out of curiosity... unfortunately i have very little control over the curriculum, so i'm figuring the book list will be given to me by the program. still haven't heard what it'll be, i'm guessing that isn't decided yet. some tips though: if you see a copy of "the elements of style", set it on fire. "they say/i say" is definitely worth reading, maybe one of the best and most approachable books on academic writing in a long time. i'm also a fan of "keys for writers" as just generic reference, but OWL has pretty much replaced that by now
Thanks for this blog. Any other books you would recommend to those who strive to write better? (Not necessarily for in an academic setting but in general too.) Who are the writers you admire the most for their prose? What periodicals do you read for leisure? What was the last book you finished? Thanks
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On July 01 2010 06:55 spinesheath wrote:Make sure you teach your students the difference between their/there/they're, tell them that it's "would've" and not "would of" (at least in most cases  ), and that there's a difference between programers and programmers...I am honestly amazed that these kinds of mistakes are made so often on TL, especially by US Americans. Makes me wonder if kids from the US read more than 2 books with less than 50% pictures before they turn 18...
Lol did you mean there's a difference between progamers and programmers? Because you just wrote the same word with two variant spellings  . I wouldn't normally nit-pick but it is ironic when you're commenting on others spelling/usage errors.
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On July 01 2010 07:08 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:15 benjammin wrote:On July 01 2010 06:11 hp.Methos wrote:
what books are you making your students read? out of curiosity... unfortunately i have very little control over the curriculum, so i'm figuring the book list will be given to me by the program. still haven't heard what it'll be, i'm guessing that isn't decided yet. some tips though: if you see a copy of "the elements of style", set it on fire. "they say/i say" is definitely worth reading, maybe one of the best and most approachable books on academic writing in a long time. i'm also a fan of "keys for writers" as just generic reference, but OWL has pretty much replaced that by now Thanks for this blog. Any other books you would recommend to those who strive to write better? (Not necessarily for in an academic setting but in general too.) Who are the writers you admire the most for their prose? What periodicals do you read for leisure? What was the last book you finished? Thanks
hmm.. i really think the best way to improve your writing is just to read more, as reading too much about how to write will probably drive you insane. i'm a big fan of thomas pynchon, steven millhauser, david foster wallace (his nonfiction, not his fiction), don delillo, john cheever, john updike, the list goes on and on.
as far as periodicals go, i subscribe to a ton of literary quarterlies to see what short fiction is in print, but you can't lose with the new yorker and the atlantic. also check out "the best american" series, as well as the o. henry prize stories. yearly publications, great stuff.
i've been reading a lot of poetry lately, so the last thing i read was "ahead of all parting" by rainer maria rilke, great stuff.
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On July 01 2010 07:09 Subversive wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 06:55 spinesheath wrote:Make sure you teach your students the difference between their/there/they're, tell them that it's "would've" and not "would of" (at least in most cases ), and that there's a difference between programers and programmers...I am honestly amazed that these kinds of mistakes are made so often on TL, especially by US Americans. Makes me wonder if kids from the US read more than 2 books with less than 50% pictures before they turn 18... Lol did you mean there's a difference between progamers and programmers? Because you just wrote the same word with two variant spellings . I wouldn't normally nit-pick but it is ironic when you're commenting on others spelling/usage errors.
Nope, I did write two different words, progamers and programmers, but with horrible typo in the former... But at least English isn't my native language, so this shall be my excuse!
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On July 01 2010 05:48 Empyrean wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 05:47 number1gog wrote:
English questions huh....
Why does my word processor always give me shit when I try to type "it's." As in, "The cookerchiller 5000's ability to cook a steak while chilling my beer is it's best selling point."
I'm trying to show that "it" possesses whatever it is that it possesses, but my word processor tries to tell me the correct spelling is without the apostrophe.
What's up with that? "It's" is a contraction for "it is." "Its" is the third person singular possessive. EDIT: always.You pretty much wrote "The cookerchiller's ability to cook a steak is it is best selling point."
I think he was trolling ><"
Yeah, my question would also mainly be what you look for in A papers. You could use this site for questions.
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On July 01 2010 05:45 Saracen wrote:
Also, are you willing to edit my essays and then send scathing emails to the professor if I don't get a very good grade?
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When do you use who and when do you use whom???
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United States24740 Posts
On July 01 2010 08:43 Dance.jhu wrote:
When do you use who and when do you use whom???
If you want to be liked by people who aren't English professors than use 'who' every time
Another way of putting it is.... I always forget how the word whom works XD
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Cool blog, but there's a difference between a professor and an instructor/TA.
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Aish. I hate those rigid, arbitrarily reached requirements I've had for so many papers. Any idea how teachers pull "write x pages on y" numbers out of their ass, e.g. 12 pages for a 600-level Corporate Creativity paper or 15 for a 600-level Info. Tech. & Org. paper?
Drives me up a wall.
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I've seen a lot of people here using "there" instead of "their", and most of them had United States set as their country.
I ask you, from a person who english is not the mother tongue, how can people make such mistake? Do "there" and "their" sounds the same?
There is also the mistake of using "then" when the right would be "than"... most of those done by non american flagged people
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I ask you, from a person who english is not the mother tongue, how can people make such mistake? Do "there" and "their" sounds the same?
I'd guess the vast majority of people making this mistake would actually realize it was improperly used if they reread it. Their, they're, and there all sound identical and it's not that uncommon to think faster than you type. I've been known to replace entire words with something completely unrelated.
There's a difference in pronunciation of "then" vs "than" -- "in" vs "an."
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The biggest lesson I ever learned for writing good papers in English was a rather simple one. Make a logical argument. Each paragraph should logically follow from the previous one. If you were to jumble all your paragraphs up, the paper should make no sense. One of the biggest problems in papers is that high schools never really teach you how to organize your writing. The five paragraph essay format is a really big offender, as it teaches students to use a list to organize their paper rather than any sort of intelligent formatting.
Sorry this isn't a question, but I saw some people asking about how to write better, and I couldn't help myself. =)
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yep, there, they're, and their are homophonic -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone
i actually don't know this -- are homophones unique to the english language?
those rigid, arbitrary page length requirements are intended so that a student is writing a paper of sufficient complexity more so than sufficient page length. i'd say a majority of the time if a paper is coming up way short it's because the argument isn't ambitious enough. also, professors know all the tricks to pad page length counts, so don't do them.
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On July 01 2010 10:56 benjammin wrote:yep, there, they're, and their are homophonic -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonei actually don't know this -- are homophones unique to the english language? those rigid, arbitrary page length requirements are intended so that a student is writing a paper of sufficient complexity more so than sufficient page length. i'd say a majority of the time if a paper is coming up way short it's because the argument isn't ambitious enough. also, professors know all the tricks to pad page length counts, so don't do them.
I don't think so ... Mandarin has homophones sorta but with different intonations.
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United States22883 Posts
On July 01 2010 10:56 benjammin wrote:yep, there, they're, and their are homophonic -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonei actually don't know this -- are homophones unique to the english language? those rigid, arbitrary page length requirements are intended so that a student is writing a paper of sufficient complexity more so than sufficient page length. i'd say a majority of the time if a paper is coming up way short it's because the argument isn't ambitious enough. also, professors know all the tricks to pad page length counts, so don't do them.
Just a heads up since I'm not in college anymore: the new method is to do a Find and Replace on punctuation and increase their font. On paper, it's difficult to notice, but it can definitely stretch a 15+ page paper by another page or so.
I know quite a few professors who don't know about this trick.
I have a copy of S&W and I don't think I've ever read it. o.o It was given to me by a journalism professor, though. I never took any English classes in college until my senior year (an environmentalist English class) and I wish I had taken more. Perhaps not Freshman comp. 
Thanks for answering these questions. I've really enjoyed reading your blog.
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On July 01 2010 12:19 lac29 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 10:56 benjammin wrote:yep, there, they're, and their are homophonic -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonei actually don't know this -- are homophones unique to the english language? those rigid, arbitrary page length requirements are intended so that a student is writing a paper of sufficient complexity more so than sufficient page length. i'd say a majority of the time if a paper is coming up way short it's because the argument isn't ambitious enough. also, professors know all the tricks to pad page length counts, so don't do them. I don't think so ... Mandarin has homophones sorta but with different intonations.
That's the exact opposite of a homophone then, isn't it T_T? In Mandarin, tones are 10000 times more important than in English - to an extent, tones don't matter in English. But I mean, the point is that homophones can't be distinguished just by hearing them, you have to infer based on the context. I'm not sure Mandarin has any of those because most words that sound exactly the same are actually the same character/spelled the same.
To everyone that's surprised by Americans with poor English - it makes perfect sense actually. People with English as their first language are less inclined to figure out the proper way to say something, or the proper spelling of whatever word. First of all, they figure that they can just sound it out, or wing it. Second of all, they're surrounded by people who don't speak properly and use slang and all that, so to speak with proper grammar would make you 'weird' and possible 'uncool' which no American teenager wants.
And it's not just Americans that do this. When I took high school Spanish, my teacher always talked about how natives mixed up their v's and b's (because of how they sound) when spelling, whereas the people who didn't already know Spanish always spelled stuff perfectly. Learning English as a foreign language usually means that you're going to learn it properly, because you're learning it as a language. For Americans, even though they have English classes, most English classes are focused on teaching students how to analyze, read, etc. not how to use proper grammar. Grammar is usually like, 5 lessons out of a whole year of classes. Plus, most people tend to write like they speak, and the way they speak is atrocious xD.
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EPT
